


Go To Your Happy Place

by Laliandra



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Beaches, Fluff, It's Not His Hair It's A Palm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-24
Updated: 2011-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 22:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laliandra/pseuds/Laliandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desert island breaks. Being distractingly naked. Boat rides. Questionable boat rides.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go To Your Happy Place

**Author's Note:**

> For: Pyrimidine who was having a terrible no good very bad day and wanted good things and a trip to tropical beach with beer., with <3 (it would also be for Van, lately in hospital, but they gave her the Good Drugs so I'm sure she's fiiine) and the Do Nothing Club  
> Disclaimer: 1) Inception remains not mine D: 2) I have never been to Uzbekistan or tried to buy an island. 

Arthur isn't romantic, exactly. He gets spectacularly eye-rolly about things like flowers and handholding and Valentines. But he is, well, _sentimental_ is the only word Eames can think of. Arthur hoards mementos: postcards from his family, the tiny, intricate models that Ariadne leaves around work and living spaces alike, paintings that Cobb sends along with detailed explanations of what James claims that they depict. He keeps them in fire proof lockboxes, and takes pictures that are then saved to multiple USB sticks which are in _different_ safes dotted around the world.

And Eames is a thief and Arthur lets himself be careless around him, so Eames knows that in those boxes there are cinema tickets from evenings that they've never called dates, coasters from bars that they've both just happened to be in after a job, keycards for hotel rooms that they've split the bill for, all carefully indexed and guarded like valuables. Better, in fact, because Eames has seen Arthur leave behind thousands of pounds worth of possesions, whole apartments.

Eames has tried to find this strange but mostly he just finds it fitting. They say the devil is in the details, but with Arthur, it's the love.

Which is to say, it shouldn't be a surprise to find himself here. Arthur has the money to buy a stretch of beach and transport them there, and Arthur is obsessive enough to remember the dream in perfect detail - right down to the type of cooler - even though it was years ago.

*

Eames said, "We need to go stop. Do something nice," and Arthur did some complex, sardonic thing with his eyebrows that expressed just how ridiculous he found that suggestion.

"We've been stuck in this bloody room for 4 days, I'm seeing family case files behind my eyelids and you're starting to get the patented Arthur Face of Immenent Annilation every time Dom sends you a new schematic. We. Need. To. Stop."

"We're in the middle of Uzbekistan, undercover, in the middle of winter" Arthur pointed out. "I don't see where you think we're going. There isn't exactly a nice beach we can pop along to." He rubbed at his eyes and Eames tried not to think too much about the way that made him feel, like he just wanted to spoil Arthur _rotten_.

Eames sighed. "And I thought you were more than just a pretty face..." He knew, actually. It was something else he tried not to think about too much. That way lay madness.

Arthur threw a pen at him. Eames dodged but Arthur, the bastard, seemed to have built that into his trajectory and it caught Eames a stinging flick to the temple. He held up his hands in surrender quickly before Arthur could find another projectile. " I'm just saying. We build the impossible. A quiet place to kick back in for a few hours shouldn't be too difficult. There can be sunshine. And palm trees." He'd already got half mapped out, the sand - white - like that little cove off Capri, the air - warm but not too heavy - like Manly Bay. There wouldn't be any buildings to contend with, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Arthur said, "I guess," slow and cautious. "Can there be beer?"

"For you, there can be Budweiser," Eames said magnanimously, because Arthur was a horrible plebeian in exactly one way, and it involved beer.

Eames let himself watch Arthur's hands set up the PASIV, all competence and ink stains from the cheap biros they'd resorted to using, until it was time to think about a tiny slice of paradise.

He shut his eyes and opened them again onto sunshine glinting off azure water.

"I have to say, I'm very surprised I'm not naked," Arthur remarked. Eames turned around and saw Arthur sprawled out on the sand, him and the cooler next to him the only things breaking the long, perfect line of white that disappeared into the shimmering horizon.

He said, "I don't think that would be very relaxing for either of us, really." And then he spent some time congratulating himself for not staring at Arthur, laid out on the sand in some surfer short things that Eames had seen him wear in a dream - another dream, that is - where Eames'd been the mark's first crush (they'd met on holiday in Benidorm) and Arthur had been a fucking distraction. Arthur raised an eyebrow and okay, maybe he should have done something else during the congratulations rather than staring at Arthur.

"I'm trying to resist the urge to splash you," Eames improvised.

Arthur sat up and fiddled with the cooler lid. "You'd think you'd at least manage to be convincing in a world that you created," he said. He looked up, smiled, easy as that, almost like he was pleased. "Shut up and come have a beer."

And Eames had thought, maybe, maybe...

*

"This is," this is Arthur, and this is why Eames puts up with the fact that Arthur still sometimes pulls a face like a wet cat when Eames calls him 'darling', "familiar."

"What I lack in imagination I make up for in memory skills," Arthur says. He starts to unbutton his shirt. They're both still wearing the clothes they left New York in, when Arthur had said, "Let's go somewhere," and two planes, one boat ride and one thing that the man driving it claimed to be a boat ride later they were here - white sand, blue water, one cooler and no one else in the world.

Eames says, "I never doubted you." He strolls open to the cooler, opens it. There's 5 kinds of beer in there, 4 of which he knows Arthur hates. "What did I do to deserve this?" he asks as he settles down in the sand, because now Arthur is only wearing trousers, bare foot in the sand and grinning. Eames makes an appreciative noise and an expansive gesture with his bottle. "I mean, look at it." Arthur has that pleased look again, and now Eames can recognise it.

Arthur takes another step forward, eyes fixed on Eames. "You made me the perfect beach once. I'm returning the favour." He hooks his thumbs into his waistband, resting them into the hollows of his hipbones. "Only on my perfect beach, everyone is naked."

Eames swallows hard. He drops the bottlecap into his pocket with one hand, and reaches for Arthur with the other.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to comment below or on [its LJ entry](http://laliandra.livejournal.com/31691.html)


End file.
